How to install a Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 7

Some applications like SQL Server are dependent on network functionality. These usually require a network card to be present. If you don't have a network card installed on your PC, then you will need Microsoft Loopback adapter in order to setup and run these applications that depend on network functionality. The Microsoft Loopback adapter is a testing tool for a virtual network environment where network access is not available.

To install Microsoft Loopback adapter, follow steps below:

1. Go to START menu -> All Programs -> Accessaries -> Command Prompt. Run the Command Prompt as administrator (right-click the command prompt).


2. From the command prompt, run “hdwwiz.exe“. This should launch the “Add Hardware Wizard“. Click Next.


3. Select “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)” and click Next.


4. Now from the list select Network Adapters and click Next.


5. Under Manufacturers, select Microsoft and select “Microsoft Loopback Adapter” under Network Adapter and click Next. This should start the installation. Click Finish when the installation is completed.


To confirm the loopback adapter installed, right-click Computer, select properties. Click Device Manager and expand Network Adapters and you can see the Loopback adapter installed there.

Read more »

Posted in: howto,microsoft loopback adapter,Windows 7,windows tips

How To Open An UIF File

Have you download a UIF file and wondering how to extract/mount this file format so that you can view the content compress with UIF.

A UIF file is actually a MagicISO CD/DVD image file. In order to view the contents, you have to first mount the UIF image file. The other common option for a compressed image file is ISO. comparatively, UIF provides better encryption and also has better compression than ISO format.

There are two ways to decompress and extract the content:

1. MagicISO

Unfortunately, MagicISO is not a free tool. If you plan to use within 30 days, you can download the trial edition to depression UIF file. MagicISO can be downloaded from: http://www.magiciso.com/. After the installation of MagicISO, start it. Then click on Tools and Decompress UIF Image.

Choose the source file and the destination location for the ISO file.

2. UIF to ISO Converter

This method is slightly more complex. But, you can use it to extract large files, larger than 300MB. The MagicISO trial edition has a file size limiation of 300MB. Unless you want to pay for MagicISO, UIF to ISO converter is a free version that can be used to overcome the limitation of MagicISO trial edition.

For Windows:

1.Download UIF2ISO converter. Extract the downloaded zip file to get a folder of the same name. Then, run the setup to install the program.

2. Double-click on the UIF2ISO icon to launch the program. Then, locate the .uif file you want to extract and click “Open”.

3. Specify a ISO file name and confirm the conversion to start the converting process.

For Mac OS X: Download and use uif2iso4mac.

Once the UIF file being converted to ISO format, you can mount it using any virtual disk manager software or using the free unzip tool such as 7zip to extract the content.

Read more »

Posted in: computer tool,file format conversion,howto,magicISO,poweriso,uif file

How To Boot and Install Windows 7 From USB Flash Drive

Usually, most people install or reinstall Windows operating system from DVD drive. But, since the USB become popular, we have an alternative to boot and install an operating system to a PC from USB flash drive.

Since most of windows installers come in DVD drive format, we have to copy it to a USB flash drive. Before that, I have to make the USB flash bootable. In this post, I will discuss the command prompt method. You can make the Windows 7 USB FLash installation Disk from any Windows computer. In this post, I use Windows 7 (the instruction is the same for Windows XP). Below are the steps:

Step 1: Format USB Flash Drive To NTFS format

In your Windows, go to Control panel -> system -> hardware -> Device manager. Under the disk drives section, right click on the USB storage drive and select Properties.

Step 2: Select USB Flash Drive To Be Bootable Disk

On Windows 7 Start Menu, navigate to command prompt entry (Start -> All Programs -> Accessaries) , right-click the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Type "diskpart" & press ENTER. Then type "list disk", ENTER to list all disks attached to this computer.

From the disk list, identify the USB Flash Drive. In my case, Disk 1 (red rectangle) is my USB flash drive. Type "select disk 1" to select the disk (the command is "select disk X" where X is the drive number).

After selecting the disk, list the partition in the selected list by typing "list partition". Select the partition you want to make a bootable Windows 7 installation by typing command "select partition Y", where Y is the partition number of USB flash drive. Then, type "active" to make the selected partition to become an active partition.

You are done in preparing the disk for bootable. Type "exit" and Enter.

Step 3: Creating bootable USB flash drive

Copy the content from the Windows 7 Installation content to your computer desktop into a folder, I named is as win-7 (you can name it according to your preference).

Go into the windows folder, in my case win-7 by typing command "cd Desktop/win-7" (Change the destination to the folder that you have extracted). Then, "cd boot" to go into boot directory.

Type: bootsect /nt60 X: (X is the drive latter of your USB drive)


Then, copy all the files from the Windows 7 folder to the USB flash drive. Now, you should be able to use the USB Flash drive to boot and install Windows 7.

Note: You need to change the first boot device to your USB drive in the BIOS.

Read more »

Posted in: bootable usb flash,disk partition,howto,installation,pen drive,usb flash drive,Windows 7,windows os,windows tips

How To Monitor Your PC Or Laptop Temperature

Is your computer shutting down frequently without any notice? Most often, it happens after your leave your computer running for a while, and it just shut down without any message. One of the root courses of this symptom is your PC or Lapter is experiencing high temperature until it hits the the max allowable temperature. The computer will be automatically shutdown to protect the PC from overheating.

So, if you PC is experiencing the symptom of shutting down suddenly and frequently, most probably it is caused by high temperature. One way to confirm the issue it is to measure the temperature of PC or Laptop.

You don't to install a thermometer at your PC or laptop. One of the best ways to monitor is to install temperature reading software that might help you actually know if the problem is causing by overheating. Coretemp is a tiny application which is low on resources and is surprisingly accurate in providing the PC or laptop temperature in real-time. It works by communicating with the built-in digital thermal sensor (DTS) on latest Intel and AMD processors.

It is a tiny but extremely powerful and accurate program which tells you the temperature of each core simultaneously and can be easily installed on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Coretemp can be download at http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/.

In the above example, CoreTemp reads the temperatue on Duo Core Intel PC. Tj Max is the maximum allowable temperature. If any of core temperature hit Tj Max, the computer will be shutdown automatically to pretect the PC from overheating. The above example, the Cores are measured at 69 deg. C to 70 deg. C, showing that this PC is experiencing an overheating issue.

Read more »

Posted in: computer tool,digital thermal sensor,howto,monitor pc temperature,windows,Windows 7,Windows Vista,Windows XP

What Is DMG File and How to Convert It To ISO format Using DMG2ISO

Recent I have downloaded some file with DMG extension. I try to use an Extraction Tool like Unzip to extract the file because I thaught it is one of the compression file. No, it is NOT!

In fact, it is a file type associated with 'Macintosh OS X' by Apple Inc. On the Macintosh, these files are treated like a real disk. They can be created with Disk Copy, burnt to CD or mounted as a normal volume. If you have a .DMG file on a Windows PC it's likely you have a Macintosh file that is can't be read from a Windows PC. How to convert the .DMG file so that it can be used in Windows PC?

Thanks to DMG2ISO, a small tool that run on Windows and convert .DMG file into ISO format. It is a FREE tool that can be download at: http://vu1tur.eu.org/tools/.


Once downloaded the DMG2ISO.zip from the URL above, unzip it. You should see dmg2iso.exe. No installation needed. To use the tool , at your Windows (in my case I used Windows 7), select START, type in CMD at search field and press ENTER to go to Command Shell.


At the command shell, the syntax to convert .DMG file to .ISO file is:

dmg2iso [filename.dmg] [filename.iso]

For example, I have a file name: myfile.dmg that I want to convert it to mynewfile.iso, the command is: dmg2iso myfile.dmg mynewfile.iso [ENTER].

The file will be converted to ISO format.

DMG2ISO is a command-line tool that is not very user-friendly. PowerISO is a windows version that is more user-friendly and easy to use. However, it is NOT free. You can use it's trial version that has a few limitation, but still do a good conversion job.

Read more »

Posted in: dmg,dmg2iso,file format conversion,howto,poweriso